This blog is dedicated to Computer RolePlaying Games (CRPG) that have been released a long time ago or new games with CRPG heritage and that I will revisit in one way or another. I will either replay them or write about the hidden gems well worth playing today. Games will be played through Dosbox or WinUAE.

Currently playing: Sword Coast Legends, Skyrim

May 5, 2012

A short update

This morning I finally completed Legend of Grimrock. It hold my interest to the very end and took me around 15 hours to complete.The challenge was just about right. Unforgiving like most CRPGs where. There are a lots of secrets and hidden rooms in this game and I just uncovered around 60 % of these. You have to carefully pick where to spend your skill points after every level advance which makes for fun priorities. I am looking forward to a sequel to this game.

I immediately started up and continued my adventure in Anvil of Dawn which at first paled in comparison on all measurable levels but still it is a solid game and after half an hour I was back again exploring the underground city. Within the week I will probably have an update ready.

I am already thinking of which games would be next in line but I haven´t decided on anything yet. I am thinking of reviving the excellent Legend of Faerghail. I am even inclined to try out the superb Gabriel Knight II: The Beast Within, but that is not a roleplaying game so I might not blog about it. Abandoned Places 1 or 2 for the Amiga might also be considered if I can make it run smoothly using Winuae. It could also be something entirely else.

I did try out for a few hours Amberstar - or Ambermoon, cannot remember which - last autumn but though I am sure they where very good at the time, I found the interface to clumsy and gave up in order to play more accessible games. I know they are supposed to be very good though and I might return to them sometime.

I'm about to start playing Abandoned Places myself. I played it back in my Amiga days, but unlike the smaller Eye of the Beholder and Black Crypt, I didn't complete it. Hopefully I'll complete it this time, though it's supposed to be huge. That was a selling point in those days, but these days I prefer them short and sweet. It's available for DOS, but if you want to transfer characters to AB2 you will have to play the Amiga version. I got it to work well with the Amiga Forever emulator. In contrast to lots of other Amiga games it actually allows you to use all four disk drives. You still need 6 disks, one of which is the save disk, though. So unless you manage to do a HD install, there will still be some disk swapping.

First dungeon of Abandoned Places was quite fun, although there were no real puzzles and the fighting was extremely basic and not very lethal. The characters regenerate not only spell points, but also hit points, which makes things rather too easy.

The overland map is like a totally different game. It sounded very promising from the manual, and looked quite promising at first. But movement is very clunky, especially entering villages and cities. There are shops, but no prices listed, so you have to check prices for each item individually, something which is incredibly tedious. And once in villages and cities there are nobody to talk to, not even in taverns. I've been to half a dozen locations, including the capital and still have no idea whatsoever where to go, or what to do.Maybe I'm getting old, 'cause I remember exploring more than the first dungeon the first time I played this game.

This game has a good premise, and a nice setting, but there are just too many annoying things about the game once you leave the first dungeon. And the combat is just too boring; there is no sense of danger whatsoever in the first dungeon or from the random encounters (thankfully they are infrequent) on the overland map.

I've searched the net for a walkthrough or FAQ, but have been unable to find any, so I think I'll abandon this game.

Black Crypt is a few places down on my play list, so it should be interesting to see how it compares.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this game. It only makes me want to try it out myself. Black Crypt (which I have completed) is without question the best looking dungeoncrawler RPG on the Amiga and a very competent game.

If you like old-school RPGs, you´ll love this!

Who am I ?

Stockholm, Sweden
I grew up with Commodore 64 and Amiga and the first CRPG that totally blowed me away was Bard´s Tale for C-64 in 1988.
New RPGs tends to be more and more simplistic and consolified so I have begun to return to the roots to feed my hunger for CRPGS.
Professionally I work as a systems developer and project leader.